Sacrifice
by guinevere grey
Summary: AU in which Rumpelstiltskin's intentions were never as pure as he claimed, and Belle knows it. But two months have gone by, and the tension is killing her. Rumbelle.


**Title: **Sacrifice

**Summary: **AU in which Rumpelstiltskin's intentions were never as pure as he claimed, and Belle knows it. But two months have gone by, and the tension is killing her.

**Rating: **R

**Word Count: **4761

**Author's Note: **Basically, I saw "Skin Deep," and I wanted Rumpelstiltskin and Belle to have table!sex. I really, really wanted table!sex. And/or chair!sex. So yes, this is basically a PWP, set exclusively in the fairy tale 'verse. However, though the events are AU, I tried very hard to place it into the setting and characterization of the show.

**Writing Music**: Lana Del Rey, "Dark Paradise" and "Million Dollar Man"

**Disclaimer: **The show "Once Upon A Time" belongs to…well, not me.

Belle knew the instant Rumpelstiltskin demanded her in exchange for deliverance exactly why he wanted her. A housekeeper, was all he claimed: someone to wax his tables and polish his silver and dust his bookcases. But grey and green-skinned, black-eyed master of dark and unknowable magic or not, the creature eyeing her was still a man. Her neck and shoulders, exposed above the tight golden bodice of her gown, felt cold and exposed, and she could almost feel goosebumps where his gaze traced the curve of her neck, the lines of her collarbones, and lower.

Still a man.

No, Belle knew there was only reason why he had asked for her, and one reason why he did not speak of it: her father, purple-faced with rage, would not even need to utter the word before Gaston tore the intruder limb from limb. But because he did not voice it, and because they did not see the way he looked at her, they believed his tale: that he merely wanted a maid. She was not that naïve.

Rumpelstiltskin wanted her.

She lifted her chin and met his gaze. His crooked teeth were bared in a fearsome grin, but it was his eyes that caused her blood to run cold and something hot to clench deep within her. Still, she did not look away.

_For my family_, she thought, and looked around the room. _For all of you, and for the innocents toiling in the pastures and on the battlefields. _

"I will go with you."

It had been a month, and he had not touched her—at least, not in that way. Belle had expected to be shackled to his bedpost the moment they arrived at his castle, but instead, he had dragged her to a barren cell of a room and locked her in it. She had curled up on the straw pallet, knees pulled to her chest and eyes glued to the door for the rest of the day. She had tried so hard to stay awake through the night, as well, petrified that at any moment, her captor would break through the door and demand his payment in full. Instead, he had woken her from a fitful doze early the next morning by knocking on the door, then handing her an appropriate dress and an extensive list of duties.

Belle found that the dusting and sweeping and polishing was not the worst part at all. She was prepared to let him ravish her since they arrived.

She had not been prepared to wait.

Every moment was unbearable, because, at any moment, his scaly hand could close over her arm and wrench her around to face him. When she was buffing the old wood in the darkest corners of Rumpelstilskin's library or scrubbing at the hundreds of windows in the castle or dusting the portrait gallery, she caught herself glancing over her shoulder in a panic, terrified that he would have crept up on her with his silent steps, ready to press her against the wall and take her.

At times she even began to doubt his intentions. When she could not delay any longer and crept into the airy room where he did his spinning, he would often ignore her, his eyes carefully watching his fingers as they fed the straw through the wheel and tugged out the golden cords. The dresses he gave her to wear were simply made, cut fairly high on the top and of a modest length. He did not leer, did not goad.

But sometimes, she would turn around and he would be there—not right behind her, ready to pounce, but down the hallway, or looking up from his spinning wheel, or leaning against a doorframe, a strange smile playing over his lips and his eyes huge and dark. A month earlier, she had tried to suppress her blush and quickly turned away to tend to her chores. But now—

She was angry. This unbearable tension would be the end of her. Every night, she had slept uneasily, nightmares blending with her tossing and turning. Countless times, she dreamed of the door to her sparse room flying open, Rumpelstiltskin striding in, panting hot breath into her mouth as he forced her thighs apart. She had woken in cold sweats, shaking, unsure of what was dream and what was real. If he intended to have her, why would he not simply do it?

Then, one night, her dreams were different. In them, her captor brought not terror and pain, but heat and yearning, and Belle had woken sweating for an entirely different reason, sweetly aching. She waited for her heart to still and closed her eyes and tried to remember the dream: nimble fingers, a clever mouth, black, black eyes.

The next morning when she awoke, Belle began to experiment. She dressed her hair with more care, so that it was pulled smoothly away from her face and showed the white curve of her neck. She nibbled on her lips so that they would remain flushed and swollen. She tugged down the shirred neckline of her dress just a bit lower and laced the bodice more tightly, narrowing her waist and lifting her breasts just a bit higher.

Nothing blatant.

A week passed. Now, when she would finally enter Rumpelstiltskin's spinning room to clean, she was nearly certain that not quite as much straw was spun into gold while she was present. Once, she turned from a glistening window, shoulder aching from the effort of polishing, and he had stopped entirely, looking straight at her with an expression that might have been stony were it not for the heat in his eyes. She had merely smiled and turned to the next window.

And one day, after she had dressed and eaten her porridge, she found the beeswax and soft cloths and went straight to the spinning room first. He looked up as soon as she pushed the creaky door open, and his eyebrows lifted.

"Not so very afraid of me anymore, are you, my dear?" he chortled, fingers only slowing for a moment on his spinning.

"Not afraid at all, sir," she responded lightly, even as her stomach knotted. She moved towards the long table, hesitated, and then placed the cake of wax and the cloth upon it. Then she whirled and stalked towards the spinning wheel.

"Do you intend to have me, Rumpelstiltskin?" She thrust the words out before she could change her mind.

The wheel stopped. Entirely.

He merely looked at her, eyes larger and blacker than she had ever seen them, and she thought for an instant she would fall in. She was painfully conscious of the way her rapid breathing caused her breasts to move, and she felt heat surge into her cheeks at her boldness. But she would not be deterred.

"Yes," said Rumpelstiltskin. He began spinning again, and Belle felt paralyzed and dumb. And then he spoke again above the whirr of the machine. "But only when you are ready."

Belle stood for a moment, considering what he had said, and then turned back to the table, picked up her cloth, and began to polish.

It occurred to her, later, that to lie with Gaston, whom she did not love, would have been just as much a sin as allowing Rumpelstiltskin to touch her—perhaps more, since the marriage to Gaston was only to add to her father's fortune, but in coming to Rumpelstiltskin, she bought the lives of hundreds.

Another month passes. Belle savors the choice he has given to her, weighs it in her hands, but for now, she tucks it away in the back of her mind and keeps cleaning. In the back of a wardrobe in one of the dozens of empty bedrooms, she finds a set of clothes—child's clothes, an older child perhaps, but certainly not fully grown. A boy's. Simple and well worn and, perhaps most surprising, very common. Peasants' clothing. Later, she summons the courage to ask Rumpelstiltskin whose they were.

He likes to talk to her, she has realized; he appreciates her as another human being, not just a maid—and he certainly has no reason to appreciate her as a woman yet. If she tries, sincerely and kindly, she has found that he will talk to her about any number of things. Not in great detail, of course—but she can fill in some of the missing pieces.

When she asks about the clothes, wringing the soft waxy cloth in her hands, his fingers still on the spinning wheel. "Yes," he whispers. "Those were my son's."

"Tell me about him," she implores softly, not looking at his face, but watching the way his fingers flicker along the golden thread, testing its resilience, its evenness. He stands up and approaches her, sitting down heavily in the massive chair at the end of the table. She pushes herself up so that she is sitting on it and places the cloth behind her, next to the tea service, long since cooled.

"What would you like me to tell you?" Rumpelstiltskin asks her, spreading his hands and giving her a wide, sardonic smile. She has learned to recognize his moods by now, and this one suggests that he has already revealed all he means to—that he is only toying with her now. Still, she tries.

"Anything," she murmurs. "Anything you want." She crosses one leg over the other, then leans back on both palms, and sees his gaze flicker over her body. He does not speak, and his smile fades. Belle watches his long fingers drum together, steepled before his face, and beneath her fingertips, she feels the polished grains of the tabletop: made smooth by the beeswax she rubbed into it, the same beeswax that has left her hands soft and smelling faintly of lemon.

She does not think. She pushes herself down the table towards and swings her legs around. Her eyes do not leave his as she straddles his thighs to kneel above him on the chair. He is utterly still, and his eyes are locked on hers. Tentatively, she places one hand on his shoulder and slides the other one into his hair. She wets her lips and slowly leans forward.

Belle expects to feel his lips against hers, but suddenly instead her nose brushes his hair and she feels hot breath at her ear. Large hands are firm at her back, and she hears him rasp out: "I am glad you are ready." His tongue strokes along the shell of her ear and her eyes fall shut. "But you will not kiss me." She has no time to wonder or be hurt by the strange request before his teeth close gently on her earlobe, nibbling lightly and then flicking at the bit of flesh with his tongue.

She shudders at the sensation, fingers tightening their grip on his hair, thighs trembling as they splay over his lap. He chuckles softly, a ghost of his madcap laugh, and then attacks the skin just behind her ear, sucking ardently, and it drags a moan from her throat. Her head falls forward to his shoulder as he continues to lave the curve of her neck.

She had not—she had not expected this. Naturally, she had read about these things, but reading and experiencing were worlds apart. She feels helpless, overwhelmed, wanting so much more and yet not knowing what it is she wants.

Her fingers are digging into his shoulder, she realizes, and the other hand is clenched in his hair. Perhaps she ought to attempt reciprocation?

"Rumpelstiltskin," she whispers, "Shall I…would you like me to…"

"If you wish," he murmurs into her neck, and she disentangles her fingers from his hair shoulder and slides them to his chest. The cut of his shirt under his brocade jerkin is low enough that, when she rests her palm over his heart, she can touch his bare skin with her thumb. She strokes gently, tentatively, and then drags her fingertips over the exposed skin and under the edges of his shirt, feeling the play of muscle there. The fact that the skin beneath her hands is grey-green matters little to Belle. In a rush of boldness, she scrapes her fingernails lightly through his chest hair, and feels a flush of pride at the sound he makes low in his throat.

A hand slides down her back and grasps her hip just as he gently bites the place where her neck meets her shoulder. She gasps and, to her embarrassment, her back arches so that her hips buck towards him.

He laughs again. "Slowly, dearie," he croons. "We'll get there." Both hands slide around her ribcage and his thumbs stroke the undersides of her breasts. The touch is like fire, but it is still not enough. Then his fingers—those long, nimble fingers—are plucking at the lacings of her over-gown. She feels cool air on her breasts as he peels apart the bodice.

And then he stops, not touching, simply contemplating. Belle dimly takes in the way he looks down at her, but she feels suddenly dizzy and squeezes her eyes shut, drawing her lower lip between her teeth. Her throat feels too tight to breathe. When his fingers ghost down the valley between her breasts, and then slip to the side to cup the weight of one in his palm, her eyes fly open. The instant she meets his gaze, he smiles, and a callused thumb circles her nipple. She jolts and chokes out an "_oh_" sound, releasing her lip, and then he does it again, and again.

"You truly are _ma_ _belle_," he murmurs, sounding quite pleased, and she flushes to realize he is looking at her face, carefully cataloguing her reactions. By now the other thumb has come up to tend to the other nipple.

"Please," she says, tugging at the knotted clasps of his jerkin, "Let me—"

He only grins wider and swoops forward, bending his head down, and suddenly—

Belle's fingernails scrape furrows down his chest as first his lips, then his teeth gently close around her nipple. Carefully, so carefully, he rolls it between his teeth, and then _sucks_, hard. From far away, she hears a keening sound, and then her thighs can no longer hold her upright, crouched above his lap. She collapses back, the table behind her, but in a flash his arm comes around and cradles her more closely to him. His left hand teases her other nipple, flicking it, circling it torturously, pinching it.

Both her hands are fisted in his hair, as if trying to pull him nearer than he is already. Her heart beats rapidly, and it feels as though she has another heart, beating out a sweet pulse between her legs. Suddenly the layers of cotton and crinoline tangled around her knees and thighs seem oppressive and unbearable.

She doesn't even realize how she's squirming in his lap, trying to feel him beneath her, when his hand falls to her hip and squeezes. He pulls back from her breast and she bites back a whimper.

"Kneel up for me, dearie," he says hoarsely, both hands sliding down to the backs of her knees. It takes her a moment to understand what he means, but then she obeys. Her knees are on either side of his hips, calves braced against the arms of the heavy chair. He regards her for a moment, half smiling. She finds she is no match for his gaze and drops her eyes. And then his hands begin fisting and tugging in the layers of her skirts, bunching them around her waist and spreading them wide over the arms of the chair so that her knees touch bare wood and the insides of her thighs—

are pressed against the leather of his trousers.

Her eyes fly open, and he grins at her. "You might want to brace yourself on the back of the chair," he suggests silkily, and she grips the carved wood as tightly as she can. All she can hear is her own shallow breathing and the rustling of her skirts as his hands fumble underneath the fabric to stroke over the flesh of her thighs. First his fingers flicker at the backs of her knees teasingly. She gasps, then bites her lip as those cool fingers creep upwards, slowly, towards the empty pulsing in her core.

Suddenly he laughs. "No pantaloons today? My, my, my." She shakes her head as his palms continue to slide upward.

"No, I—I knew. That is, I hoped—" His fingernails scrape over the tender skin just in the creases of her thighs, and it sends a throbbing jolt to her center. She bites back a strangled cry, and, quick as a flash, one hand darts out from under her skirts to grasp her chin. Firmly, he drags a thumb over her bottom lip, freeing it from between her teeth.

"Don't quiet yourself," he murmurs. "I want to hear you." She nods her assent and focuses on her hands, now gripping the back of the chair so tightly that the skin is stretched over white knuckles. He grins widely again and slips his hand back behind her jawline, stroking the bit of flesh beneath her ear with one finger. Beneath her skirts, his fingers circle upper the inside of her thigh, tantalizingly slow. Her core beats even harder. He is so close, so very close…

Her head falls back and a moan rips from her throat as he draws a single digit up through her wet lips. She remembers his grey-green fingers dancing over golden thread, and she imagines what those fingers must look like beneath her skirts, parting swollen folds so that a callused thumb can stroke over her center.

A single slick digit probes at her entrance and then eases inside. She tenses for a moment: it is not unpleasant, but it feels strange. And then his thumb strokes back up and touches something—a place that sends sweet fire racing through her blood and a coiling in the pit of her stomach. She gasps in lungfuls of air.

He circles the place again at the same moment he withdraws his finger and thrusts it back within her, and as she arches her back and cries out, she feels his mouth return to her neck, dropping soft kisses down to her collarbone that soon become bites that almost hurt until he drags his tongue over them.

He keeps circling and thrusting and biting, and Belle hears her own ragged voice: "Oh please, _please_—" He growls, apparently pleased by this, and thrusts harder, delicately swiping his thumb right over that sweet spot. It is too much, it is not enough, and she is surging forward, rising, flying—

And then she is falling, through shards of white-hot ecstasy.

When she comes to herself again, she is collapsed over him, head bowed over his shoulder, fingers still clenching the chair. One of his hands is still beneath her skirts, resting on her thigh, and the other traces circles over her lower back.

"I didn't know it would be like this," she murmurs, pushing herself upright shakily and leaning back into his hand for support. Rumpelstiltskin grins, eyes slitted.

"Well, it isn't like this for _everyone_," he purrs. "And don't forget, we're not done yet."

She wets her lips, trying to steady her breathing, and reaches for the clasps of his jerkin with trembling fingers. A few tugs and the first is undone, and then the next. She tries to ignore the way his fingers begin tracing little circles on her thigh, concentrating on his shirt buttons, now. _One, two, three_—her finger stumble when she feels the ghost of a touch at the curls between her legs—_five, six_—she inhales sharply at the soft stroking on her tender flesh—and then the seventh button pops free, and she slides her palms over the bared expanse of grey-green skin and looks up at him.

There is only a moment to take in his expression, fiercer than she has ever seen it: lips pressed together tightly, brows drawn together, and eyes blazing. The next instant she is being lifted up and backwards, and she shrieks, hands scrabbling at his shoulders beneath the material of his shirt. Rumpelstiltskin drops her none too gently on the edge of the massive wooden table. Slowly, deliberately, he slides the hand at her thigh down her leg until it is behind her knee, and then tugs, hard, so that her hips are flush against his.

Belle gasps at the contact, and her shoulderblades scrape the table as she arches up. She can feel him against her, still laced in leather trousers, the hard heat pressed intimately against her soft, wet center, already beginning to ache again. He laughs low in his throat and, slowly, rolls his hips against hers. Oh, she can feel the texture of his laces, gently abrading her sensitive flesh, and she moans, rocking her hips, trying to reach more of the delicious friction. Feverishly, she yanks at his jerkin and his shirt, wanting them _off_, wanting to run her fingers over his skin and see the way the muscles bunch as he slides the hand out from behind her back to brace himself over her.

He seems to acquiesce, drawing back to pull off both garments, but when he moves to pull away from her hips, she wraps her leg around him without thinking. This time, he is the one to gasp at the contact. A moment later, he laughs.

He looms over her again, wiry and sleek, and draws two fingers lazily down the valley between her breasts. She jolts up, toward him, pressing her aching flesh even closer to his, but it is not enough, and when all he does is close his eyes and groan, she runs her fingers down his torso towards the laces at the front of his trousers. His eyes snap open, and he grabs both of her wrists in one hand, pinning them to the table above her head. Distantly, she hears the tea tray rattle, and then a smash.

"No, my dear, in my own time," he says, and though she moans and arches upward, wanting to touch him more, he only grins.

With his other hand, he reaches down between them, drawing back from her to yank at the lacings of his trousers. Her legs fall to the table, splayed wide. And then—_oh —_and then he returns to press his bare length against her. Her gasp melts into a whimper when he begins to slide himself up and down. The friction and the heat of him are burning her, but deliciously, wonderfully, and she needs _more._

She opens her mouth and what comes out surprises her: "Let me touch you. Please." She flushes at her temerity, and he stills, contemplating her for a moment as his tongue flickers over his lips. His grip loosens. Immediately, her hands fly to his shoulders, stroking over his chest and down his arms, as his hand falls to her hip and grips it tightly. As he leans over her again, she snakes her arms around to clutch at his back. One of his hands slides up to rest just above her mound and delicately, deliberately, his thumb brushes down over that sensitive cluster of nerves.

Lightning judders through her veins. She arches up, and in that moment, he thrusts into her.

_Painpainpain_.

She cries out and digs her fingernails into the skin of his back. He stills, grunting, and panting through his teeth.

"I'm sorry, dearie," he murmurs hoarsely, voice pitched lower than she has ever heard. Oh, he is too big, he is stretching her beyond what she can bear, and when he rocks shallowly, her head bangs back against the table. But his thumb circles, and then presses down, harder, and the sweet-sharp pleasure quivers through her again, and this time, when he thrusts back into her, she arches up to meet him.

"Wrap your legs around me," he murmurs, and she obeys.

It still hurts, and she feels hot tears leak out the sides of her eyes, but his touch also tightens the knotted tension throbbing inside her, and with each new stroke, she finds it easier to ignore the pain and embrace the pleasure. And soon the pain transforms into pleasure alone, and she squeezes her legs more tightly around him. She wants him closer.

He seems to sense her eagerness, and the next thrust is rougher, harder. She slides backwards on the wooden table, waxed so well by her own endeavors. He tightens his grip on her hip to pull her back against him, and Belle knows that she will bear his dark finger-marks there, later.

She wants to feel him everywhere; her breasts ache to be touched, nipples tightened beyond bearing, and when he drives back into her, she pulls his chest down to hers, arching up so she can rub her nipples against the coarse hair on his chest. He groans, then, low in his throat, and dives in to suckle her neck just as he changes the angle of his hips.

It takes only one stroke before she feels him touch the new place deep within her, as if he has found the string at the core of her being and plucked it, and now everything in her body quivers in response. Her mouth falls open in a voiceless scream as she clenches around him, lifting her hips as he drives deeper than ever before.

His thumb brushes over her bud of flesh once more, and stars explode behind her eyes. She is mindless, oblivious to everything but the ecstasy crashing through her. She is spinning and unraveling, faster and faster, conscious only of Rumpelstiltskin around her and above her and within her.

She is dimly aware of him pulling away from her neck as he throws his head back with a strangled sound. From far away, he tenses, suspended for one long moment, and then collapses over her.

When their heartbeats have slowed again and their breath comes more easily, Rumpelstiltskin withdraws from her, carefully smoothing her skirts back down before tucking himself in and lacing his trousers back up. Belle inhales softly at the sensation and blushes to feel the wetness leaking out of her, trickling down her folds to her thighs.

By the time Belle pushes herself to a sitting position and self-consciously attempts to re-lace her bodice, Rumpelstiltskin has already buttoned his shirt and is slipping his jerkin back on. He turns to face her and grins widely as she hurries to finish the job, flushing under his gaze.

"Well, my dear, it appears we may have to revise your list of duties."

She laughs. "I quite agree." She hopes the revising will mean fewer chores—the thought of scrubbing floors and climbing up ladders seems insurmountable in this state, with her flesh tender and aching and—she can tell—bruises already purpling at her hip and wrists.

But she would not mind fetching tea—tea would be nice. She is about to inquire if he would like some when she remembers the crash she heard earlier. Turning her head, she sees that the teapot has fallen on its side, the sugar is overturned, and two teacups have rolled off their saucers. And—

Oh no. She gasps and pushes herself off the table too quickly, biting back a whimper at the soreness between her thighs, and reaches for the single cup lying on the carpet.

"What's wrong?" he inquires, striding over. He'll be furious, she is sure. Rumpelstiltskin is so particular with the way she handles his precious things, and if he should blame her for this…

"I—I'm so sorry," she murmurs, holding up the cup between her hands, extending it towards him like an offering. "This is chipped." Only then does she look up at him. For a moment, he is still, and she can almost see his face breaking into anger.

But then he smiles lazily and licks his lips, looking past the cup, at her. She flushes, remembering his hand pinning her wrists to the table, other hand caressing her to wanton heights, and he smiles wider.

"Don't trouble yourself," he purrs, and the heat in his expression sends a new rush of pulsing warmth to her core. "It's just a cup."

A/N: Confession: this is the first smut I've ever written. Liked it? Loathed it? Let me know by reviewing—I would so very much appreciate it!


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